Archive for August, 2008

This speech is a must-watch for Democrats, Republicans, Independents, and even non-voters – it will probably get you to vote for Obama. Senator Obama describes specific policy changes that he plans to address social security, healthcare, trade deficits, unemployment, renewable energy, foreign policy and more. This is certainly anything but the “empty rhetoric” that the conservatives have been describing of Obama’s speeches. It is powerful, honest, and inspires the hope that our country can redeem itself and return to our former glory.

In the continuing media campaign to get Americans to want to drill offshore and in the National Arctic Wildlife Refuge, Hannity and Gingrich are shown here once again making fun of conservation techniques and attempting to discredit the real solution: DECREASE OIL CONSUMPTION AND TRANSITION TO ALTERNATIVE ENERGY SOURCES. It’s really that simple. The “drill, drill, drill” philosophy might get us a little more oil in the relative short term (3-5 years before we start seeing any actual oil), but by staying with our current infrastructure, demand will continue to rise, and the future result will be the same – rising oil prices and the continued “addiction to oil”.

The alternative is to change how we use oil now by conserving, and continue to develop battery and alternative fuel technology so that in the next 1-5 years your next new car will be electric or fueled with cellulosic ethanol or algae-based biodiesel instead of oil. In the same time it would take to see anything from drilling new wells, we’ll be well on our way to kicking fossil fuels to the curb.

What kills me is the continued lack of professionalism and blatant skew put on this type of reporting from Fox News and many conservatives. They scoff at inflating your tires, where in fact, keeping your tires at proper pressure can improve mileage by as much as 3.3%, which is not bad for such an easy solution. Combine that with people using public transportation, riding bikes for local trips, carpooling, and other basic, money-saving conservation strategies, and a solid plan for renewable technology implementation, and we simply won’t need to drill.

We can only hope that our future and current leaders have the foresight and wisdom to guide us there rather than staying with the reactionary, short-sighted status quo.

Climate Change and Peak Oil

In the United States, we use over 20 million barrels of oil per day, over 7 billion barrels per year, importing more than half of this volume from Africa, the Middle East, Russia, and other oil-producing states.
In purchasing this oil from other parts of the world we put billions of dollars per year into the hands of oil shieks, outdated theocratic rulerships, radical Islamic militants, and even terrorists. The pursuit of this oil has many costs, including the billions of American tax dollars spent on a war that is largely political in order to secure our access to this resource. Already unstable, any breakdown in the current oil economy will lead to skyrocketing fuel prices for Americans. Even the experts within the oil industry predict "peak oil", that is, the highest possible global oil production, to come anywhere within the next 10-50 years. After that point the maximum amount of oil that we can pump out of the ground will decline despite the growing demand for oil for energy, plastics, gasoline, jet fuel, and the many other uses for petroleum. This is a second major reason for a fuel cost spike, that will hit our economy terribly, from which we may not ever recover.
A second major global crisis that is intimately intertwined with energy is climate change. The latest data suggests that the polar ice caps are melting even faster than previously predicted, leading to erratic weather patterns, severe droughts and floods, and rising sea levels. If our current energy consumption continues to grow as predicted, we will have set the stage for severe natural disasters displacing millions of people from their homes, killing an unestimateable number of humans and animal species, costing billions of relief dollars, as well as costing more than 5% per year of global economic growth indefinitely. These two issues go hand in hand – our voracious appetite for energy requires the burning of more and more fossil fuels which in turn leads to more of the CO2 emissions that cause global warming. This is not supposition and is not theory. It is fact. There are many resources to support these estimates and projections from leading politicians, economists, climate experts, geologists, and other experts in their fields.
What this means is that this energy crisis will occur within many of our lifetimes and all of our children's lifetimes. We cannot leave the downfall of our civilization and the scarring of our globe as a legacy to our next generation. Do not take the media’s word, or my word for that matter, research it for yourself so you understand the dire position of our current crises.